Power Play

President Trump's challenge to Nicolás Maduro highlights echoes of the Monroe Doctrine and a new phase in U.S. hemispheric strategy

- by TOM O'CONNOR

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S deployment of warships off the coast of Venezuela, along with his authorization for the use of force against drug trafficking organizations, is fueling speculation of potential military action in South America.

However, the White House's moves also speak to a broader shift in policy focus under Trump's “America First” movement that envisions the Americas as a whole as part of the U.S. zone of interest—an outlook reminiscent of the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine, which served as the basis for U.S. intervention against European colonialism and communist expansion across the region. With Venezuela and its leftist leader President Nicolás Maduro now in the crosshairs, experts see the dawn of a new era of U.S. power projection across the Western Hemisphere.

“This massive show of force is consistent with the administration's efforts to assert dominance in the Western Hemisphere, reviving the Monroe Doctrine that declared the region to be uniquely a U.S. sphere of influence,” Cynthia Arnson, a leading Latin America expert serving as adjunct lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies, told Newsweek.

'Gunboat Diplomacy'

Arnson warned of the potential regional consequences of such an approach, noting how just because “many Latin American democracies would welcome the end of the Maduro regime, that doesn’t mean that they are lining up to applaud a 21st century version of gunboat diplomacy.”